The present invention relates to security, and more specifically, to security for computer stored information that may be viewed on a computing device.
With the vast increase of personal, electronic and wireless technologies available to individuals, virtually everyone uses at least one computing device. Examples of such computing devices includes laptop and personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular telephones, automated teller machines (ATMs), kiosks, etc. Each of these, and other, devices may at times displays confidential or personal information.
To protect the information stored in the computing device or to which the computing device may have access, methods to authenticate the user, such as passwords and the like have been employed. In many situations, however, other non-authorized individuals may be able to visually snoop to view sensitive or private data such as, for example, intellectual property, commercial information, confidential data, client data, employee/Human Relations data, financial information or other personal data. The criticality of this issue is demonstrated by the inclusion of “over the shoulder snooping” in recent lists of information security threats.
Further, the above problems are not just limited to personal devices. The same problems may also exist in the workplace where sensitive information may be displayed on a worker's computer screen such that non-authorized persons may view the information via over the shoulder snooping or when the person is not present.
Facial recognition has been used in some cases to help secure sensitive information or documents (collectively or individually referred to as a “sensitive document” herein). In such systems, a primary user of a particular computing device is designated and the device will not display any documents or run any application programs unless the primary user is present. These systems utilize an image capture device to scan a users face and compare it to a digital description of the primary user's face. In the event the two don't match, the system is “locked down” and no documents are displayed nor may any applications be run on the computing device. One way in which this is accomplished is disable any documents (either sensitive or not) from being displayed if the primary user is not present.